Birding with a Banjo: The day tweet met twang

We found out one day last spring when we were camping near Charlottesville, Va., alternating between long birding walks and sitting by the fire. On a perfect afternoon, I dragged a chair over to a nearby creek and started tuning my banjo to play a few tunes.

A friend of ours, Robbi Farrell, pulled out her phone and videoed the scene as the Titmouse joined me in a long and lyrical duet of alternating tweets and twangs.

A Tufted Titmouse — not the one in a duet with my banjo — but a cousin a spotted some time later.

At times, it was hard to tell who was leading whom.

Birds are always offering us lessons of one sort or another if we’ll listen. They have much to say, between mating songs, scolds to competitors and danger calls when a predator is approaching.

I couldn’t tell which of these I was hearing, and I only got a glimpse of the Titmouse. But it’s a conversation I’ll always remember. With the winter moving in and the birds heading south, this seems like the perfect time to share this video. We hope it puts you back in the springtime woods at least for a moment.

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About us

We’re two journalists who’ve traded in our work in publishing and syndicated writing for following and photographing the birds. We live in Washington, DC, but are traveling the country every chance we get -- and are sharing the lessons birds are teaching us and the photos we take along the way.

Why Flying Lessons

This website is about what we can learn from the birds around us. Some of the lessons are obvious, such as the way birds can be a barometer of environmental changes. Others are subtle, like the way you, as an observer, have to adapt to navigate the world in which birds operate. We ourselves still have much to learn about birding, a late-in-life pursuit that has captivated us in retirement. But we decided to start writing about the lessons and teachings as we’re finding our way, in hopes that our storytelling and photography will help to celebrate a captivating element of nature.